L'viv, the Ukrainian form of the city's name in the official language of the country it is located in today, is a typical city in east central Europe. Like all urban areas in that part of the European continent, L'viv was traditionally inhabited by peoples of different nationalities and religions, who may or may not have been of the same nationality as the administrative authorities of the many states that ruled the area.

L'viv's history begins in 1250, when the Rus’ prince and soon-to-be king Danylo of Galicia–Volhynia built what was to become his new capital closer to the river routes that linked the realm northward via the rivers Bug and Vistula to the Baltic Sea, as well as eastward and southward via the rivers Dniester and Prut to the Black Sea. A century later, Galicia was annexed by Poland, where it remained until 1772. From then until 1918, Galicia was an Austrian province in the Habsburg Empire, with L'viv as its administrative centre. Austrian rule was interrupted at the outset of the First World War, when during the fall and winter of 1914‒15 the city, together with most of Galicia, was occupied by tsarist Russia. At the close of the war, in November 1918, L'viv was for three weeks the seat of government of the short-lived West Ukrainian People's Republic; then from 1919 to 1939, it was again part of Poland. When Poland fell to Nazi Germany in September 1939, L'viv was annexed by Hitler's temporary ally the Soviet Union. Soviet rule lasted less than two years. From June 1941 to the summer of 1944, the city was part of Nazi Germany's Third Reich, until it was ‘reunited’ with the Soviet Union, specifically Ukraine, from 1944 to 1991. Since that time it has been part of an independent Ukraine.

Aside from Rus’–Ukrainians, Poles, Austro-Germans, and a few thousand Russians, all of whom represented the states that have ruled L'viv, the city has been home to Germans (from states other than Austria), Armenians, Austrian officials and bureaucrats of varying nationalities (in particular Czechs), and most importantly Jews, who by the outset of the twentieth century comprised 27.7 per cent of the inhabitants.